Evans Rutto - Career

Career

His first major competition was the 1999 IAAF World Cross Country Championships and he finished in fifth place in the long race and helped secure a dominant Kenyan finish in the team competition. Rutto became an elite runner at the 10k to half marathon distances: he won the 2001 Beach to Beacon race and was the top Kenyan finisher at the 2001 IAAF World Half Marathon Championships with a run of 1:00:43 for sixth place.

He moved up to the marathon in 2003 and won the Chicago Marathon with a record debut time of 2:05:50, making him the fourth fastest marathoner ever at the time (after Paul Tergat, Sammy Korir and Khalid Khannouchi). This was the fastest ever time for a marathon debut and remains so, – it also remains his personal best time.

He opened his 2004 season with a win at the London Marathon, beating Sammy Korir to the finish by half a minute. He returned to the Chicago course in October and defended his title with a winning time of 2:06:16 – over a minute and a half ahead of runner-up Daniel Njenga. These two times placed Rutto at the top two spots on the season's fastest marathons list for 2004.

His 2005 performances were considerably less successful as he only managed tenth place at the London Marathon, losing his unbeaten record of three straight victories. His fastest time of the year, 2:07:28, was only enough to bring him fourth at the Chicago Marathon. At the 2006 London Marathon he was in tenth place again and appeared in agony at the end of the race.

Rutto took time out from competitive running after a disappointing 2006, due to injury and personal problems.

He trains with Kimbia Athletics and is coached by Dieter Hogen. Rutto is married with three children, Winnie, Dennis, and Dieter (after Coach Dieter Hogen) (as of 2005). His father Kilimo Yano was also a runner, whose personal best at 10,000 metres was 29 minutes.

NB: he should not be confused with the similarly named Evans Kipkosgei Ruto (winner of the 2009 Cologne and Hannover Marathons).

Read more about this topic:  Evans Rutto

Famous quotes containing the word career:

    Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)

    “Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.
    Lawrence Kutner (20th century)

    It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.
    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)